Alderman John Arena (45th) recently introduced an ordinance to allow the practice in his ward.

Private booting allows the owner of a parking lot to enforce the vehicles which park in their lot by immobilizing vehicles whose drivers park in the lot but then leave the premises. Private booting is seen as alternative to towing as a way to make sure vehicles are not trespassing on the property and/or to make sure parking spots are available for shoppers who want to patronize businesses where the lot is located.

According to the story, about half the city’s wards allow private vehicle immobilization.

That’s when, according to DNA Info Chicago, Forman lost it and attacked the booter working for Global Parking with pepper spray and the “wooden end of a hammer.”

Forman eventually turned himself in to police. He was charged with aggravated battery and criminal damage to property. A judge set his bond at $125,000.

Global Parking Management patrols many private parking lots in Chicago using the same type of vehicle immobilization device–the Denver Boot–that the City of Chicago uses to convince parking ticket scofflaws to cough up what they owe.

That’s because the bill introduced in the Illinois State Senate in January to allow municipalities to drastically expand the use of the Denver boot to collect unpaid city debts, has been tabled–for now.

According to Illinois Senate President John Cullerton’s (D-Chicago) office, the bill had already been assigned to the Judiciary Committee a few weeks prior. But during Thursday’s session in Springfield, it was withdrawn from its committee assignment and sent back to Assignments by the bill’s sponsor, Illinois State Senator Ira Silverstein (D-Chicago).

While Silverstein did not respond to repeated attempts for comment, staff members in both his Chicago and Springfield offices said they had received many calls voicing opposition after news of the bill was reported in the media. Crain’s Chicago Business broke the story earlier in the week.

Woman Gets $750 Refund After Red Tape Over Yellow Boot

After a long and tiring airplane trip, the last thing you want to be waiting when you land is a surprise.

A “surprise” is what Megan Nolan and her young family came back to after flying into Midway and walking back to the parking lot to find a bright yellow metallic boot adorning their car nearly two weeks ago.

It is not uncommon for unwary drivers with outstanding unpaid parking tickets, especially those from outside Chicago proper, to find their car booted after parking in any of the airport parking lots at O’Hare and Midway. In some ways it’s like shooting fish in a barrel and boot crews assigned to airport parking immobilize a lot of vehicles.

Tired and aggravated, Nolan waited by the car with her daughter while her husband Andrew walked the two blocks to the Midway payment office. Both Midway and O’Hare have payment offices open 24 hours a day for drivers to pay their tickets to get a boot released.

Nolan thought she they’d have to pay a few hundred bucks at most to pay for the pair of unpaid tickets and the boot fee to have their car released.

She knew the drill. Having had her vehicle booted twice before about a decade ago, before moving to the far western suburbs back in 2004, she was grudgingly resolved to just paying up and getting on the road home.

“I had been booted a long time ago,” explained Nolan. “I just paid my tickets. I didn’t yell. Didn’t scream. I just paid what I owed.”

But the Nolans got a jolt when the city told them, in addition to the two outstanding parking tickets and boot fee, the city was looking for an additional $60 boot fee and a $750 fine for tampering with a boot on an immobilized vehicle that was allegedly theirs back in 2010–a $810 shock.

Finds $320,000 In Lost Wages But Problem Gets Fixed

That’s the short version of the results of an investigation of night shift booters–the people who immobilize vehicles with too many unpaid parking tickets–by the Chicago Inspector General’s office.

According to an IGO report, since overnight booting began in late 2009, there were some scheduling issues with the Department of Streets & Sanitation dispatchers, who helped verify if a vehicle was boot eligible or not, which essentially resulted in booters being instructed by their managers to take long lunches and extra breaks near the end of their shift.

This violation of city policy resulted in the number of boots being placed to drop to nearly zero for the last two hours of the overnight shift from 4-6 AM.